I started reading Martin Luther’s commentary on Romans recently and found this helpful in understanding the relationships between faith and the works of the Law. he says,
But God judges according to what is at the bottom of the heart, and for this reason, His law makes its demands on the inmost heart and cannot be satisfied with works, but rather punished works that are done other wise than from the bottom of the heart as hypocrisy and lies.
Accustom yourself, then, to this language, and you will find that doing the works of the law and fulfilling the law are two very different things. The work of the law is everything that ones does towards keeping the law. To fulfill the law, however, is to do its works with pleasure and love, and to live a godly and good life of one’s own accord with out the compulsion of the law.
Hence it comes that faith alone makes righteous and fulfills the law…This is what he means in chapter 3, after he has rejected the works of the law, so that it sounds as though he would abolish the law by faith; “Nay,” he says, “we establish the law by faith,” that is we fulfill it by faith.
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